VANET Applications: Hot Use Cases

Current challenges of car manufacturers are to make roads safe, to achieve free flowing traffic with few congestions, and to reduce pollution by an effective fuel use. To reach these goals, many improvements are performed in-car, but more and more approaches rely on connected cars with communication capabilities between cars, with an infrastructure, or with IoT devices. Monitoring and coordinating vehicles allow then to compute intelligent ways of transportation. Connected cars have introduced a new way of thinking cars - not only as a mean for a driver to go from A to B, but as smart cars - a user extension like the smartphone today. In this report, we introduce concepts and specific vocabulary in order to classify current innovations or ideas on the emerging topic of smart car. We present a graphical categorization showing this evolution in function of the societal evolution. Different perspectives are adopted: a vehicle-centric view, a vehicle-network view, and a user-centric view; described by simple and complex use-cases and illustrated by a list of emerging and current projects from the academic and industrial worlds. We identified an empty space in innovation between the user and his car: paradoxically even if they are both in interaction, they are separated through different application uses. Future challenge is to interlace social concerns of the user within an intelligent and efficient driving

Change Impact Analysis for SysML Requirements Models based on Semantics of Trace Relations

Change impact analysis is one of the applications of requirements traceability in software engineering community. In this paper, we focus on requirements and requirements relations from traceability perspective. We provide formal definitions of the requirements relations in SysML for change impact analysis. Our approach aims at keeping the model synchronized with what stakeholders want to be modeled, and possibly implemented as well, which we called as the domain. The differences between the domain and model are defined as external inconsistencies. The inconsistencies are propagated for the whole model by using the formalization of relations, and mapped to proposed model changes. We provide tool support which is a plug-in of the commercial visual software modeler BluePrint

Assessment of a human computer interface prototyping environment

A Human Computer Interface (HCI) prototyping environment with embedded evaluation capability has been successfully assessed which will be valuable in developing and refining HCI standards and evaluating program/project interface development, especially Space Station Freedom on-board displays for payload operations. The HCI prototyping environment is designed to include four components: (1) a HCI format development tool, (2) a test and evaluation simulator development tool, (3) a dynamic, interactive interface between the HCI prototype and simulator, and (4) an embedded evaluation capability to evaluate the adequacy of an HCI based on a user's performance

Improving construction materials management practices in construction sites

Construction Materials Management is a vital function for improving productivity in construction projects. Poor materials management can often affect the overall construction time, quality and budget. Currently, the construction material management practice in Somalia is believed to be poorly performed. Lack of standardized construction materials management system is one of the key issues facing by the building industry in Mogadishu-Somalia. The aim of this study was to investigate the current practices of material management at construction sites in Mogadishu-Somalia. A questionnaire survey study design was used to explore construction materials management practices. Fifty questionnaires were distributed to project managers, project engineers, site engineers, engineer, and foreman, and they were received and analysed. The following data analysis techniques were used: descriptive statistics were conducted to report sample characteristics, reliability and validity analyses were performed to confirm robustness of the instrument, graphical presentation such as bar charts were developed, and finally Average Mean Index Scale were constructed. The study results reveals that, 46.7% of respondent’s organization obtain materials for sites without site requisition by site engineer provisions, while 28.9% of respondent’s organization procure materials for sites with site requisition by project manager provisions and 13.3% of respondent’s organization procure materials for site by engineer. The results indicated that currently there is no standardized and computerized construction materials management system applied in Somalia. The researcher concluded that all contracting companies are interested in using some techniques of managing construction materials such as creating and updating database for materials categories from local and international suppliers. Finally, researcher recommends to use computerized construction materials management systems to reduce effort and time, and to achieve more accurate results

Understanding Older Vehicle Users: An Interpretative Approach

Future adaptations in vehicle design should be linked in some parts to the age-related changes often faced by the older users. The aim of this research is to investigate the multiple age-related changes of Chinese older vehicle users in order to assist designers to better understand current and future older users’ needs. Although qualitative interpretative approaches have rarely been applied in the field of traffic gerontology research, they are widely used in current design research to explore persons’ lived experiences, behaviours and emotions. Therefore, this study employed qualitative research methods consisting of observation, interview, travel logbook and co-discovery to explore older vehicle users’ travel needs. The interpretative analysis confirmed that multiple methods such as interview, travel logbook, and co-discovery are useful to gain a holistic understanding of older drivers’ travel needs. However, the one journey driving observation cannot provide valuable categories to explore older users’ multiple travel needs due to daily living context absence in the one trip experiment. It is clear that the useful methods for determining research for older users will depend on the product. The findings demonstrate that Chinese future older generations are more concerned about their age-related differences from social and cultural perspective rather than physiological perspective. Social and cultural context play important role to shape older vehicle users’ future travel needs. From design a point of view, understanding the social activity and cultural context surrounds older vehicle users should make it possible to predict older drivers’ needs related to vehicle property. Keywords: Older Vehicle Users; Cultural Context; Social Context; Vehicle Design; Qualitative Research</p